70 Poetry. [Chap. XX. 



beauties and graces, it may be said, to the honour 

 of the first class of poets of the eighteenth century, 

 that if they fall below some of their predecessors 

 in the bold, the original, and the sublime, they as 

 much exceed them in taste, refniement, uniform 

 proprietry, and general elegance of versification. 



It may further be asserted, that a greater por- 

 tion of the poetry of the last age is purely moral, 

 than was ever before offered to mankind. Most 

 of the distinguished poets of former times were 

 faulty in this respect, and some of them grossly so. 

 When we look particularly into the English poets 

 who lived prior to the eighteenth century, we find 

 them all, if we except Spencer, Shakspeare, and 

 Milton, representing love rather as an appetite 

 than a chaste and dignified /?<2j-W(?;z. Accordingly 

 they w^ere accustomed to put language into the 

 mouths of the most virtuous and delicate females, 

 utterly inconsistent vfith our ideas of decorum. 

 It has been said that Prior's Henry and Emma is 

 the first poem in the English language, keeping 

 in view the exception before stated, in which love 

 is treated with the decency and delicacy to which 

 it is entitled. 



Among many of the latter poets we find a 

 chasteness in the exhibition of characters and man- 

 ners, a purity of morals, and a delicacy of senti- 

 ment, whifch transcend all former example. The 

 greater part of the moral pieces of Pope may be 

 safely applauded in this view, as more worthy of 

 imitation than those of most of his predecessors. 

 Young has enlisted the sublimity of imagination, 

 and the music of numbers, on the side of virtue 

 and piety, with the niost happy success. The 



